Paul McCartney turned 70 this year. It's been odd watching him age, given that part of the Beatles' appeal was their extreme youth. How was it possible
that four men under 30 years old wrote songs with such insight, while helping to guide a generation through experiments in everything from facial hair and
LSD to mixing a sitar with an electric guitar?

In a way it's been stranger to watch Sir Paul not age. His skin in his face is youthfully taut (some work done, perhaps?), and his underlying baby face still shows through. He tours and leaps about on the stage like he was still 24 years old, the age he wrote "When I'm 64." His youthfulness is a testament to a century
of astonishing progress in keeping people healthy longer -- through better nutrition and hygiene, and the wonders of biomedical science.

As I discussed in the first installment of this series, "How Can Bioscience Push the Limits of Lifespan?" we may be on the cusp of even greater boosts in human life expectancy thanks to discoveries in genetics and regenerative medicine (using stem
cells to regrow and repair damaged or diseased tissues), and the fusion of machines and machine-produced spare parts (such as pacemakers and joint
replacements). Some scientists believe that human lifespan might be dramatically increased; others that any bump that occurs will be more modest.

Whatever the actual boost in lifespan, it's worth addressing the reality that "old age" already has moved far beyond 64 -- which was considered old back in
1967, when the Beatles' song was released on St. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Now what we consider "old" is pushing 80, which gives new poignancy to
the young narrator in this song asking his lover: "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64?"

On the surface, the song seems whimsical, with its bouncy clarinet opening and lines like "Sunday morning go for a ride" and "You can knit a sweater by the
fireside." Underneath this is the young man's unease about whether he will matter when he is old, or if anyone will be there for him.

Sir Paul needn't have worried about being needed or well fed. Yet his question is becoming poignant for many as the generation who idolized the Fab Four
hit age 64 and beyond, and society is faced with millions more seniors than we have ever had before.

Even without a radical increase in lifespan the problems are mounting. Medicare funds are scheduled to be exhausted by 2024, and Social Security by 2033
unless changes are made. In part this comes from people staying alive far longer than the architects of these programs envisioned, with more needing expensive long-term
treatments and high-tech care. Beyond the U.S. the rest of the world is also rapidly turning old, with the life expectancy globally at age 67, up from 32
in 1900.

So what happens if science in the near future allows our lifespans to jump more dramatically, perhaps by taking a pill that slows aging, allowing someone
who is Paul's age of 70 to have the body of a 35 year old? I'm not saying this will happen, though it's enough within the realm of possibility that it's
worth considering the consequences as a thought experiment.

In this spirit, I have been asking people in talks and lectures how long they want to live, providing four possible answers: 80 years, 120 years, 150
years, or forever. (I invite you to join over 30,000 people to take this survey; the survey and results are here). I
also asked several thousands people taking the poll to tell me why they wanted to live to the age of 150 (which is close to 164) -- or why not.

Their answers broke down into five "upsides" to life at an advanced age like 164; and nine "downsides":

Upsides of life at 164

More time with friends and loved ones:
"I want to be with my kids as long as I can," said a 35-year-old consumer health entrepreneur I interviewed for this project. "I lost my dad to heart
disease and my mother to cancer when I was in my early 20s. The idea of not being there for my kids makes me want to live as long as I'm useful to them."
Living for a century and a half will also allow people to be there not only for their kids, but also for their grandkids -- and their great-grandkids, or
great-great-grandkids.

Geniuses would still be alive:If the average life expectancy had been 164 in the 19th century, a number of smart people would still be with us to help solve pressing problems like
global warming; make great discoveries and inventions; and create new works of art. Albert Einstein would be 133 years old if he were still alive; Henri
Matisse and Mahatma Gandhi would be 143; and Marie Curie would be 145.

Opportunity to know the future:
Many who want to live to age 150 (or longer) are driven by a curiosity about how things turn out for society in the next 50, 100, or 1000 years?

More to accomplish in life:
With extra time you could take that raft trip in Africa that you put off for all those years. You could take up gardening, scuba diving or parasailing.
When you're 70 and still young, with another 90-plus years of life to go, you'll have time to get that college degree or that PhD you've always dreamed
about, and to start an entirely new career or two.

Delaying or preventing the suffering of old age:
Aging is the highest risk factor for most diseases. Slowing the aging process is appealing to some because it will at least delay the diseases and
infirmary of growing old. "The idea of my body failing seems such a waste," said one survey respondent. "I mean, if there is a pill or something to keep
this from happening, why not take it?"

Downsides of life at 164

Fear of prolonged frailty:
The overwhelming reason given for not wanting to live longer than 80 was the fear of physical and mental decline. Even when people were promised a pill to
slow aging, four out of five people I asked didn't want to take the risk of prolonged infirmity and did not change their vote.

The financial burden of paying for extended lives:
The vast majority of people in the world make barely enough to make ends meet, with more than 2 billion people making less than $2 a day, and a billion going to bed
hungry each night. Even in the United States the minimum wage is only $7.25 an hour. "I'm not interested in working for another 100 years," said a 49-year-old waitress,
masseuse and single mother of two in Portland, Oregon. "I'm tired right now," she said.

Life is hard:
The list of vicissitudes that life may deal out can be dispiriting -- divorce, job loss, estrangement, depression, illness, and violence. "Even if you are
having a great life, the longer you live, the more chances are that something bad will happen," said a 38-year-old woman who is the Chief Operating Officer
of a small biotech company I met at a science meeting. "Why take that risk?"

Wars, plagues and poverty:
"I worry that if we live long enough, something terrible will happen, like a nuclear war, or floods from global warming," said a young history teacher at a
high school in Cleveland, Ohio.

Overpopulation, resource depletion, and the environment:
Many worry that radically extending life span would cause a ruinous increase in population, as a portion of the 57 million people a year who now die, would not. "It can't be good for the
environment to add millions of people who would have died," said a 32-year-old physician in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Love and relationships:
How fresh would love be if you had lived through dozens or hundreds of relationships, and had been married eight or 10 times -- or even 23 times, as
suggested in the modified Beatles lyrics to "When I'm 164"?

Boredom:
People who want to live past 80 years profess to have more to accomplish and learn than is possible with today's average life span. Others say they would
not know what to do with the extra time.

We would cease to be human?:
A number of respondents suggested that regenerating brains and tinkering with DNA to radically increase life span would push us beyond the edge of what it
means to be human.

Who gets the cure?:
Unless a cheap and widely available fix for aging becomes rapidly available for all, the beneficiaries, at least at first, will be wealthy early adopters.
Long-lifers have a ready answer to this: that the tech that bumps up lifespan will eventually get cheap enough for all, like cell phones and personal
computers. Time will tell if they are right, or if whatever longevity tech becomes available is affordable only to a few people.

***

Even for Paul McCartney, there have been pluses and minuses to growing old. In "When I'm 64" he imagines an elder version of himself who might be insecure
about being needed, but who is also living a quiet life with his lover as they spend their time knitting, going on Sunday rides, and summering on the Isle
of Wight.

The real Paul had a tragic setback when his beloved Linda died of breast cancer, and also when his second marriage fell apart. On the other hand, Paul
McCartney is still with us, writing music and bouncing around on stages performing hits like "When I'm 64." He even has kept his hair.

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Writing used to be a solitary profession. How did it become so interminably social?

Whether we’re behind the podium or awaiting our turn, numbing our bottoms on the chill of metal foldout chairs or trying to work some life into our terror-stricken tongues, we introverts feel the pain of the public performance. This is because there are requirements to being a writer. Other than being a writer, I mean. Firstly, there’s the need to become part of the writing “community”, which compels every writer who craves self respect and success to attend community events, help to organize them, buzz over them, and—despite blitzed nerves and staggering bowels—present and perform at them. We get through it. We bully ourselves into it. We dose ourselves with beta blockers. We drink. We become our own worst enemies for a night of validation and participation.

Even when a dentist kills an adored lion, and everyone is furious, there’s loftier righteousness to be had.

Now is the point in the story of Cecil the lion—amid non-stop news coverage and passionate social-media advocacy—when people get tired of hearing about Cecil the lion. Even if they hesitate to say it.

But Cecil fatigue is only going to get worse. On Friday morning, Zimbabwe’s environment minister, Oppah Muchinguri, called for the extradition of the man who killed him, the Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer. Muchinguri would like Palmer to be “held accountable for his illegal action”—paying a reported $50,000 to kill Cecil with an arrow after luring him away from protected land. And she’s far from alone in demanding accountability. This week, the Internet has served as a bastion of judgment and vigilante justice—just like usual, except that this was a perfect storm directed at a single person. It might be called an outrage singularity.

Most of the big names in futurism are men. What does that mean for the direction we’re all headed?

In the future, everyone’s going to have a robot assistant. That’s the story, at least. And as part of that long-running narrative, Facebook just launched its virtual assistant. They’re calling it Moneypenny—the secretary from the James Bond Films. Which means the symbol of our march forward, once again, ends up being a nod back. In this case, Moneypenny is a send-up to an age when Bond’s womanizing was a symbol of manliness and many women were, no matter what they wanted to be doing, secretaries.

Why can’t people imagine a future without falling into the sexist past? Why does the road ahead keep leading us back to a place that looks like the Tomorrowland of the 1950s? Well, when it comes to Moneypenny, here’s a relevant datapoint: More than two thirds of Facebook employees are men. That’s a ratio reflected among another key group: futurists.

Forget credit hours—in a quest to cut costs, universities are simply asking students to prove their mastery of a subject.

MANCHESTER, Mich.—Had Daniella Kippnick followed in the footsteps of the hundreds of millions of students who have earned university degrees in the past millennium, she might be slumping in a lecture hall somewhere while a professor droned. But Kippnick has no course lectures. She has no courses to attend at all. No classroom, no college quad, no grades. Her university has no deadlines or tenure-track professors.

Instead, Kippnick makes her way through different subject matters on the way to a bachelor’s in accounting. When she feels she’s mastered a certain subject, she takes a test at home, where a proctor watches her from afar by monitoring her computer and watching her over a video feed. If she proves she’s competent—by getting the equivalent of a B—she passes and moves on to the next subject.

Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.

And if thy brother, a Hebrew man, or a Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee. And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty: thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy floor, and out of thy winepress: of that wherewith the LORD thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him. And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the LORD thy God redeemed thee: therefore I command thee this thing today.

— Deuteronomy 15: 12–15

Besides the crime which consists in violating the law, and varying from the right rule of reason, whereby a man so far becomes degenerate, and declares himself to quit the principles of human nature, and to be a noxious creature, there is commonly injury done to some person or other, and some other man receives damage by his transgression: in which case he who hath received any damage, has, besides the right of punishment common to him with other men, a particular right to seek reparation.

Even when they’re adopted, the children of the wealthy grow up to be just as well-off as their parents.

Lately, it seems that every new study about social mobility further corrodes the story Americans tell themselves about meritocracy; each one provides more evidence that comfortable lives are reserved for the winners of what sociologists call the birth lottery. But, recently, there have been suggestions that the birth lottery’s outcomes can be manipulated even after the fluttering ping-pong balls of inequality have been drawn.

What appears to matter—a lot—is environment, and that’s something that can be controlled. For example, one study out of Harvard found that moving poor families into better neighborhoods greatly increased the chances that children would escape poverty when they grew up.

While it’s well documentedthat the children of the wealthy tend to grow up to be wealthy, researchers are still at work on how and why that happens. Perhaps they grow up to be rich because they genetically inherit certain skills and preferences, such as a tendency to tuck away money into savings. Or perhaps it’s mostly because wealthier parents invest more in their children’s education and help them get well-paid jobs. Is it more nature, or more nurture?

The Wall Street Journal’s eyebrow-raising story of how the presidential candidate and her husband accepted cash from UBS without any regard for the appearance of impropriety that it created.

The Swiss bank UBS is one of the biggest, most powerful financial institutions in the world. As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton intervened to help it out with the IRS. And after that, the Swiss bank paid Bill Clinton $1.5 million for speaking gigs. TheWall Street Journal reported all that and more Thursday in an article that highlights huge conflicts of interest that the Clintons have created in the recent past.

The piece begins by detailing how Clinton helped the global bank.

“A few weeks after Hillary Clinton was sworn in as secretary of state in early 2009, she was summoned to Geneva by her Swiss counterpart to discuss an urgent matter. The Internal Revenue Service was suing UBS AG to get the identities of Americans with secret accounts,” the newspaper reports. “If the case proceeded, Switzerland’s largest bank would face an impossible choice: Violate Swiss secrecy laws by handing over the names, or refuse and face criminal charges in U.S. federal court. Within months, Mrs. Clinton announced a tentative legal settlement—an unusual intervention by the top U.S. diplomat. UBS ultimately turned over information on 4,450 accounts, a fraction of the 52,000 sought by the IRS.”

During the multi-country press tour for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, not even Jon Stewart has dared ask Tom Cruise about Scientology.

During the media blitz for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation over the past two weeks, Tom Cruise has seemingly been everywhere. In London, he participated in a live interview at the British Film Institute with the presenter Alex Zane, the movie’s director, Christopher McQuarrie, and a handful of his fellow cast members. In New York, he faced off with Jimmy Fallon in a lip-sync battle on The Tonight Show and attended the Monday night premiere in Times Square. And, on Tuesday afternoon, the actor recorded an appearance on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, where he discussed his exercise regimen, the importance of a healthy diet, and how he still has all his own hair at 53.

Stewart, who during his career has won two Peabody Awards for public service and the Orwell Award for “distinguished contribution to honesty and clarity in public language,” represented the most challenging interviewer Cruise has faced on the tour, during a challenging year for the actor. In April, HBO broadcast Alex Gibney’s documentary Going Clear, a film based on the book of the same title by Lawrence Wright exploring the Church of Scientology, of which Cruise is a high-profile member. The movie alleges, among other things, that the actor personally profited from slave labor (church members who were paid 40 cents an hour to outfit the star’s airplane hangar and motorcycle), and that his former girlfriend, the actress Nazanin Boniadi, was punished by the Church by being forced to do menial work after telling a friend about her relationship troubles with Cruise. For Cruise “not to address the allegations of abuse,” Gibney said in January, “seems to me palpably irresponsible.” But in The Daily Show interview, as with all of Cruise’s other appearances, Scientology wasn’t mentioned.

Some say the so-called sharing economy has gotten away from its central premise—sharing.

This past March, in an up-and-coming neighborhood of Portland, Maine, a group of residents rented a warehouse and opened a tool-lending library. The idea was to give locals access to everyday but expensive garage, kitchen, and landscaping tools—such as chainsaws, lawnmowers, wheelbarrows, a giant cider press, and soap molds—to save unnecessary expense as well as clutter in closets and tool sheds.

The residents had been inspired by similar tool-lending libraries across the country—in Columbus, Ohio; in Seattle, Washington; in Portland, Oregon. The ethos made sense to the Mainers. “We all have day jobs working to make a more sustainable world,” says Hazel Onsrud, one of the Maine Tool Library’s founders, who works in renewable energy. “I do not want to buy all of that stuff.”

An attack on an American-funded military group epitomizes the Obama Administration’s logistical and strategic failures in the war-torn country.

Last week, the U.S. finally received some good news in Syria:.After months of prevarication, Turkey announced that the American military could launch airstrikes against Islamic State positions in Syria from its base in Incirlik. The development signaled that Turkey, a regional power, had at last agreed to join the fight against ISIS.

The announcement provided a dose of optimism in a conflict that has, in the last four years, killed over 200,000 and displaced millions more. Days later, however, the positive momentum screeched to a halt. Earlier this week, fighters from the al-Nusra Front, an Islamist group aligned with al-Qaeda, reportedly captured the commander of Division 30, a Syrian militia that receives U.S. funding and logistical support, in the countryside north of Aleppo. On Friday, the offensive escalated: Al-Nusra fighters attacked Division 30 headquarters, killing five and capturing others. According to Agence France Presse, the purpose of the attack was to obtain sophisticated weapons provided by the Americans.